


Soldiers

by Evilawyer



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Introspection, bridging all Doctors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilawyer/pseuds/Evilawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows that the curse of being a Time Lord is to be forever condemned to forever cycling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> Immediate time frame: "The War Games", episode 6 or thereabouts.  
> Overall time frame: All 50+ years of Doctor Who, circling back on itself in one big ouroboros. Because that, I think, makes sense.

“Romans,” Zoe exclaims. “Like the ones that attacked us. But these soldiers. What are they here for?” 

A simple enough question, but to his ears, its overlain with all the bloodshed, death and horror that he remembers.

He does remember it. All of it, although he sometime forgets -- or blocks, yes, blocks, that’s rather more like it -- that Time feeds back on itself in an endless circle. Or can do, when She’s feeling particularly ruthless in a seductive sort of way. Or seductive in a ruthless sort of way. He’s never quite sure which She is when She dances with him. Both, perhaps. Time has always been the alluring coquette to him, and he has always been Her besotted fool.

The Time War. He was there. He bore witness at the fall of Arcadia. He couldn’t stop it without stopping it all, although he sometimes dreams that a tripartite manifestation of himself impossibly did. Children. So many children. Children and their parents and grandparents. Multiple generations and he remembers them all. He remembers their blood. And he’s never stopped mourning them, in the different ways his different selves have known how to mourn. He knows, now, that the curse of being a Time Lord is to be forever condemned to forever cycling, no matter how different the bodies or how different the times he lives through. He know, too, that no matter how many times he cycles back around through his lives, he’ll never forget them and never stop mourning.

But the soldiers. He remembers the soldiers most of all. He remembers the blood pouring from their veins and the blood covering their hands. Even the most inhuman and inhumane of enemies bleed, and that blood never washes off. Every soldier knows that. 

In his time, he’s thought of himself as a builder of things and a traveler but a soldier is what he’s always been. So he knows that, as terrible as it is to die, it’s so much more terrible to kill. Every soldier knows that.

But the Time War, though it colors everything he’s ever done and all that he is, happened too long ago and is too far in the future. Zoe and her question are here and now. He brings himself to her time and place, but all he can think to tell her is, “They’re going to fight, Zoe. That’s what soldiers are for.”


End file.
